Rose Finn-Kelcey (1945-2014) was a British artist who worked in a variety of media including performance, video, sound, installation, sculpture, photography, paper-cut and posters.

Finn-Kelcey’s work in the late 1960s and 1970s emerged alongside that of increasing numbers of artists concerned with formal experimentation and conceptual practices. Several of the early works consisted of making and flying flags in publicly visible spaces, as in Power for the People (1972) which were hung from Battersea Power Station in London.

Finn-Kelcey’s work, like that of many artists she shared gallery space with, was also engaged in dialogues surrounding social liberation movements during this time. For instance, The Restless Image: a discrepancy between the seen position and the felt position (1975), now owned by Tate, in which Finn-Kelcey is posed in a hand-stand on a beach, interconnects with feminist critiques of the woman as ‘seen’ whilst the title simultaneously draws attention to the shallowness of the viewer’s gaze in the invisibility of the ‘felt’. Finn-Kelcey’s work also appeared in exhibitions and spaces with explicitly feminist agendas, for instance she performed Mind The Gap as part of About Time: video, performance and installation by 21 women artists within the ‘women’s season’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in the winter of 1980. She has also performed at the Serpentine in 1983.

In 1987 Finn-Kelcey exhibited what Guy Brett describes as one of her ‘best-known works’, Bureau de Change at Matt’s Gallery in East London. The piece consisted of £1000 in coins arranged to resemble Vincent Van Gogh’s Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (1888), viewable from a platform and watched over by a security guard and surveillance cameras. Created in response to the £22.5m sale of the Van Gogh original, Brett described Finn-Kelcey’s work as ‘an argument in the form of an object. No words are necessary.’

Rose Finn-Kelcey (1945-2014) was a British artist who worked in a variety of media including performance, video, sound, installation, sculpture, photography, paper-cut and posters.

Finn-Kelcey’s work in the late 1960s and 1970s emerged alongside that of increasing numbers of artists concerned with formal experimentation and conceptual practices. Several of the early works consisted of making and flying flags in publicly visible spaces, as in Power for the People (1972) which were hung from Battersea Power Station in London.

Finn-Kelcey’s work, like that of many artists she shared gallery space with, was also engaged in dialogues surrounding social liberation movements during this time. For instance, The Restless Image: a discrepancy between the seen position and the felt position (1975), now owned by Tate, in which Finn-Kelcey is posed in a hand-stand on a beach, interconnects with feminist critiques of the woman as ‘seen’ whilst the title simultaneously draws attention to the shallowness of the viewer’s gaze in the invisibility of the ‘felt’. Finn-Kelcey’s work also appeared in exhibitions and spaces with explicitly feminist agendas, for instance she performed Mind The Gap as part of About Time: video, performance and installation by 21 women artists within the ‘women’s season’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in the winter of 1980. She has also performed at the Serpentine in 1983.

In 1987 Finn-Kelcey exhibited what Guy Brett describes as one of her ‘best-known works’, Bureau de Change at Matt’s Gallery in East London. The piece consisted of £1000 in coins arranged to resemble Vincent Van Gogh’s Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (1888), viewable from a platform and watched over by a security guard and surveillance cameras. Created in response to the £22.5m sale of the Van Gogh original, Brett described Finn-Kelcey’s work as ‘an argument in the form of an object. No words are necessary.’